Oh, let me tell you the ways...
Writing is a sure-fire way to stay poor.
That's why I was somewhat mystified by the last couple of paragraphs of Elizabeth Renzetti's love letter to Hillary in today's Globe. Hillary is obviously not a conniving greed-bag, because look, she'll be writing a book!
She will almost certainly be criticized as a cash-hungry monster by people who do not realize that writing books is precisely the wrong way to get rich (unless you're JK Rowling).
Really?
Here's a story from Forbes that claims the Clintons have made at least 23 millions for their previous books, and that includes the eight million advance Hillary got for her last memoir.
Eight million for a book might not be getting rich, but it's getting close. And however many millions she gets for her next book should put her into the rich zone for sure.
So I agree with Liz that writing a book is precisely the wrong way (among many) to get rich.
Unless you're Hillary Clinton.
Saturday, May 6, 2017
Get in on the ground floor with this outrageously talented new recording artist
Ya OK, he's my kid... that doesn't mean he's not outrageously talented.
Although I will admit to a spot of parental bias.
I remember taking him and his gear to a gig at the Anzac club in Toronto when he was sixteen years old. What bent my mind was when my kid took the stage people stopped talking and paid attention.
The trouble with Jake is he doesn't make nearly enough effort to get his shit out there.
He should do an Anzac every week and he'd be playing Massey Hall before you know it.
But as much as I wish him every success, that's gotta be his deal.
Not mine.
Although I will admit to a spot of parental bias.
I remember taking him and his gear to a gig at the Anzac club in Toronto when he was sixteen years old. What bent my mind was when my kid took the stage people stopped talking and paid attention.
The trouble with Jake is he doesn't make nearly enough effort to get his shit out there.
He should do an Anzac every week and he'd be playing Massey Hall before you know it.
But as much as I wish him every success, that's gotta be his deal.
Not mine.
Life lessons from The Korean
When I drove into town today to pick up my Saturday Globe, I found The Korean's wife and mother-in-law out in the parking lot putting up a tent.
I made a lame joke about it being shitty weather for camping. They laughed.
The Korean is a bit of a joker himself. He scans the bar-code on my paper and announces "five hundred and twenty-five dollar please!"
Ha ha... not enough good news in the world for that price, I tell him.
He settles for $5.25.
Have to say the paper was on the thin side today.
Big feature in the Focus section on condo flippers messing up the Toronto real estate market. That might be mildly interesting if you don't already have multiple friends and relatives milking that for all it's worth. You view them with a mix of envy and contempt; envy because at some level you wish you'd jumped into the game when the jumping was good.
Contempt because they're one of the reasons your children will never own property in Toronto.
But their children will.
Interesting, but nothing like the tour de force Cathal Kelly had on view a couple of weeks ago.
"Too drunk to fuck" indeed!
There's a couple of stories that cast well-deserved aspersions on Justin's captaincy of the ship of state. On page B-1 unpaid intern Rachelle Younglai has a story about shrinking paycheques for the working and middle classes.
On page A-4 Bill Curry has a story about how Justin's infrastructure initiatives are being massaged by the very people who will "ultimately own and manage infrastructure assets."
Public money, private profits; that's hardly a news story.
One thing I'd like to see more of in the Globe is coverage of the Supreme Court case that Rocco Galati has been pursuing for years now on behalf of COMER, the Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform. Follow that story and you soon realize there's no reason whatsoever for our infrastructure assets to end up in the pockets of Black Rock or the multitude of like-minded hedgies and finance sharpies.
But that's not a story the Globe is keen to spread around.
Elsewhere, Liz Renzetti uses her A-2 slot to let us know she's still pouty about Hillary's very bad and awfully terrible day six months ago. Apparently it wasn't just Russian interference in America's democratic process that sunk Hillary, although the Ruskies do get several shout-outs in her column.
No, it was even worse than that, if such a thing can be imagined.
There was a "pink elephant" in the room.
That would be sexism, for those too stunned to figure it out.
Well... sure.
Maybe.
I'd hazard a guess that the pink elephants were bigger when Golda became PM in the sixties or Maggie became PM in the seventies, but maybe Liz isn't old enough to remember those days.
Hillary lost because she and her army of consultants and advisers were outworked and outsmarted at every turn by a condo salesman from Manhattan.
Best story by far in today's paper was the profile of Toronto restauranteur Jen Agg. A far more palatable role model for young women than Hillary, if you ask me.
She's kicking the shit out of pink elephants every day, and may God bless her for it.
Anyway, I've come to accept that The Korean isn't responsible for what's in the newspaper he sells me.
His wife and mother-in-law were putting up that tent to protect the plants that all the Korean variety stores have on offer this time of year.
The weather channel is suggesting we'll get snow tonight.
So the flowers are camping tonight, I offer.
Yes! We must be prepared, he says.
Sound advice from The Korean.
Be prepared.
I made a lame joke about it being shitty weather for camping. They laughed.
The Korean is a bit of a joker himself. He scans the bar-code on my paper and announces "five hundred and twenty-five dollar please!"
Ha ha... not enough good news in the world for that price, I tell him.
He settles for $5.25.
Have to say the paper was on the thin side today.
Big feature in the Focus section on condo flippers messing up the Toronto real estate market. That might be mildly interesting if you don't already have multiple friends and relatives milking that for all it's worth. You view them with a mix of envy and contempt; envy because at some level you wish you'd jumped into the game when the jumping was good.
Contempt because they're one of the reasons your children will never own property in Toronto.
But their children will.
Interesting, but nothing like the tour de force Cathal Kelly had on view a couple of weeks ago.
"Too drunk to fuck" indeed!
There's a couple of stories that cast well-deserved aspersions on Justin's captaincy of the ship of state. On page B-1 unpaid intern Rachelle Younglai has a story about shrinking paycheques for the working and middle classes.
On page A-4 Bill Curry has a story about how Justin's infrastructure initiatives are being massaged by the very people who will "ultimately own and manage infrastructure assets."
Public money, private profits; that's hardly a news story.
One thing I'd like to see more of in the Globe is coverage of the Supreme Court case that Rocco Galati has been pursuing for years now on behalf of COMER, the Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform. Follow that story and you soon realize there's no reason whatsoever for our infrastructure assets to end up in the pockets of Black Rock or the multitude of like-minded hedgies and finance sharpies.
But that's not a story the Globe is keen to spread around.
Elsewhere, Liz Renzetti uses her A-2 slot to let us know she's still pouty about Hillary's very bad and awfully terrible day six months ago. Apparently it wasn't just Russian interference in America's democratic process that sunk Hillary, although the Ruskies do get several shout-outs in her column.
No, it was even worse than that, if such a thing can be imagined.
There was a "pink elephant" in the room.
That would be sexism, for those too stunned to figure it out.
Well... sure.
Maybe.
I'd hazard a guess that the pink elephants were bigger when Golda became PM in the sixties or Maggie became PM in the seventies, but maybe Liz isn't old enough to remember those days.
Hillary lost because she and her army of consultants and advisers were outworked and outsmarted at every turn by a condo salesman from Manhattan.
Best story by far in today's paper was the profile of Toronto restauranteur Jen Agg. A far more palatable role model for young women than Hillary, if you ask me.
She's kicking the shit out of pink elephants every day, and may God bless her for it.
Anyway, I've come to accept that The Korean isn't responsible for what's in the newspaper he sells me.
His wife and mother-in-law were putting up that tent to protect the plants that all the Korean variety stores have on offer this time of year.
The weather channel is suggesting we'll get snow tonight.
So the flowers are camping tonight, I offer.
Yes! We must be prepared, he says.
Sound advice from The Korean.
Be prepared.
Things to do with a sociology degree
My step-daughter Hanna texted me this morning with the news that she'd just served Marc Emery a hot-dog. Apparently the plucky Persian had one of his food "trucks" towed to Queens Park today for the Global Marijuana March. Shrewd call, Hoonan!
Which is what brought Emery to the scene, logically enough. I told her to put a Wally-burger on the menu in honour of the original Prince of Pot, Wally Tucker.
So Hanna is slinging hot-dogs with her soc degree. But that's not the only road open to a recent graduate. You could be an Uber driver. Many soc grads find meaningful work in retail.
Hey, the sky's the limit!
There's no such thing as too much education...
Personally, I found my sociology degree hardly held back my welding career at all. Sure, the other folks on the shop floor will view you with a degree of suspicion at first, but one thing sociology grads understand is how to blend in.
Hanna in Hoonan's food truck.
Me in Irving's shipyard.
There's always the option of more education, of course. Go for the graduate degree. Go all the way and get yourself a Doctor Phil. Your Uber clients will be massively impressed when you drop that tidbit.
Even thirty years ago the job market was tight for soc grads. I remember a sessional at UGuelph wingeing about the lack of tenure-track opportunities back in the early eighties. He'd been on the sessional track with his Ph.D. for ten years at that point, and the problem has gotten exponentially worse since. He often expressed his regret at not having become a high-school teacher instead.
Which is not to say there are zero tenure track opportunities. Who gets a crack at them though is a mighty sketchy business. White males would be pretty much SOL. White females perhaps slightly less so. What's required, beyond a visible identity as a member of an oppressed subset of society, is an appetite for political correctitude and advanced ass-kissing skills.
Hanna has more people skills when she's sleep-walking than I could ever conjure on my best day, but I'm afraid she shares my skills deficit in the ass-kissing department.
But lets not forget that a university education isn't intended as job training. Unless you're in medicine or engineering, of course. It's about building character and building a network, don't ya know!
I shared many a pint with my various profs over the years in the interest of building a network. One of the folks I really liked was a guy named Ian Currie. He was a sessional, and if I recall correctly, he didn't even have a Doctor Phil to wave around, but he had a best-selling book out at the time which I suppose, in the eyes of the hiring committee, made up for that short-coming.
Alas, he took himself to his reward before my budding networking skills had a chance to fully blossom.
And Hanna met some illustrious mentors whilst doing her degree at York, including a couple of folks I'd studied with thirty years before. The most illustrious by far was Mel Watkins. I didn't realize the old pinko was still alive till Hanna nonchalantly mentioned that he often walked her home after his evening class. Don't know if a letter of recommendation from Mel would still open many doors.
Whatever else he is or was, there's no getting around the fact that he's still a white male.
I've suggested to Hanna that she should consider a law degree. Sure, there's plenty of folks with those who are under-employed too, but Hanna has the smarts and people skills to stand out in the crowd.
She's all in if I pay for it.
Well kid, I've got a lovely batch of seedlings that I'm planning to put in just over the fence-line just as soon as I'm sure the danger of frost is over for good. The way Justin is going about his legalization gambit will ensure a healthy grey-market for ganja for years to come.
There's hope with dope, even when you have a sociology degree.
Friday, May 5, 2017
Motorcycles
Back in the middle sixties, my dear Daddy bought a plot of land a couple of miles north-west of Guelph and built our very first new house. Quite an accomplishment for DP's barely ten years into their new lives in the new country.
I wasn't yet into my teens, but I was highly attracted to all things loud and fast and motorized. The Andrews boys around the corner ran a '58 Chevy on the local dirt track, and they had their test 'n tune days on the gravel road in front of our new house. Needless to say, they were my idols.
I made a deal with Dad. If I carved a little circle through the scrub brush that covered our ten acres, he'd buy me an old beater, something that in this era and in these parts would be known as a "field car," and I would henceforth be free to hone my roundy-round chops to my heart's content.
Look out Pearson and Yarborough and Petty! Here comes Neumann!
Much to my father's surprise, I actually succeeded in carving out that circle. With an axe. It would have been maybe a really short eighth miler. Nevertheless, I'd built the track. So I went to Dad and reminded him of the other part of the deal.
Here's why you should get every deal in writing, even when it's with your Dad. He had utterly no memory of our deal to provide the race car if I provided the race track. This went back and forth for months until we struck a compromise; he bought me a motorcycle instead.
The motorcycle he bought me was an old Suzuki 80 street bike that he got from a workmate for forty bucks. It had but one mechanical flaw; it was forever stuck in second gear.
Even on my significantly less than one eighth mile track, second gear didn't cut it. So I abandoned my track and fashioned a new one around Mom's kitchen garden. It was maybe fifty by a hundred feet, and you got perfect circumlocutions without needing anything other than second gear!
That's where I honed my flat-track finesse. I'd circle that garden for hours on end with the back wheel hanging out and my left foot on the ground. No shifting required when you've only got second!
That Suzi paved the way to bikes on which the transmission actually worked. I went through a series of small-bore dirt-bikes till I landed a 175 Bultaco.
The Bultaco had the gears and brakes on the opposite side of where the Japanese bikes had them, a fact that wreaked havoc on the raspberry patch of Bruce Dickinson's mom the first time I took it for a test drive. Bruce was the school pal I was buying the Bultaco from. His mom was not impressed.
I graduated from the Bultaco to a Honda three-wheeler I got at Zdeno Cycle in Guelph. I had one of the first ever sold in Canada.
Could I ever do tricks on that little monster! I could side-wheelie for miles at a time. I could keep the front in the air for miles at a time. One of my favourite memories was when I'd line up my four younger siblings and jump over them, Knievel style!
Nobody ever got hurt, just for the record.
Alas, I hit the ripe age of 16 and it was all cars after that. Flat-tracking around Mom's garden had nothing on burying the speedometer on a 440 cubic inch Chrysler.
Oddly enough, just as I was getting out of motorcycles, my younger brother "the tree guy" was getting into them. His first ride was a 350 Honda. Then he was up to a 750, which I remember taking well over a 100mph.
Without a helmet.
My glasses blew off in the wind.
He's riding a 1200 sport twin today, commuting back and forth to work.
So I was away from motorcycles for forty years or so, till I picked up that 500 Ninja on the cusp of 60. Not sure where to take things from here. I take it for short runs around the neighbourhood once in awhile, but I don't feel I'm ready for the highway.
Where to from here?
Gonna buy a helmet tomorrow.
I wasn't yet into my teens, but I was highly attracted to all things loud and fast and motorized. The Andrews boys around the corner ran a '58 Chevy on the local dirt track, and they had their test 'n tune days on the gravel road in front of our new house. Needless to say, they were my idols.
I made a deal with Dad. If I carved a little circle through the scrub brush that covered our ten acres, he'd buy me an old beater, something that in this era and in these parts would be known as a "field car," and I would henceforth be free to hone my roundy-round chops to my heart's content.
Look out Pearson and Yarborough and Petty! Here comes Neumann!
Much to my father's surprise, I actually succeeded in carving out that circle. With an axe. It would have been maybe a really short eighth miler. Nevertheless, I'd built the track. So I went to Dad and reminded him of the other part of the deal.
Here's why you should get every deal in writing, even when it's with your Dad. He had utterly no memory of our deal to provide the race car if I provided the race track. This went back and forth for months until we struck a compromise; he bought me a motorcycle instead.
The motorcycle he bought me was an old Suzuki 80 street bike that he got from a workmate for forty bucks. It had but one mechanical flaw; it was forever stuck in second gear.
Even on my significantly less than one eighth mile track, second gear didn't cut it. So I abandoned my track and fashioned a new one around Mom's kitchen garden. It was maybe fifty by a hundred feet, and you got perfect circumlocutions without needing anything other than second gear!
That's where I honed my flat-track finesse. I'd circle that garden for hours on end with the back wheel hanging out and my left foot on the ground. No shifting required when you've only got second!
That Suzi paved the way to bikes on which the transmission actually worked. I went through a series of small-bore dirt-bikes till I landed a 175 Bultaco.
The Bultaco had the gears and brakes on the opposite side of where the Japanese bikes had them, a fact that wreaked havoc on the raspberry patch of Bruce Dickinson's mom the first time I took it for a test drive. Bruce was the school pal I was buying the Bultaco from. His mom was not impressed.
I graduated from the Bultaco to a Honda three-wheeler I got at Zdeno Cycle in Guelph. I had one of the first ever sold in Canada.
Could I ever do tricks on that little monster! I could side-wheelie for miles at a time. I could keep the front in the air for miles at a time. One of my favourite memories was when I'd line up my four younger siblings and jump over them, Knievel style!
Nobody ever got hurt, just for the record.
Alas, I hit the ripe age of 16 and it was all cars after that. Flat-tracking around Mom's garden had nothing on burying the speedometer on a 440 cubic inch Chrysler.
Oddly enough, just as I was getting out of motorcycles, my younger brother "the tree guy" was getting into them. His first ride was a 350 Honda. Then he was up to a 750, which I remember taking well over a 100mph.
Without a helmet.
My glasses blew off in the wind.
He's riding a 1200 sport twin today, commuting back and forth to work.
So I was away from motorcycles for forty years or so, till I picked up that 500 Ninja on the cusp of 60. Not sure where to take things from here. I take it for short runs around the neighbourhood once in awhile, but I don't feel I'm ready for the highway.
Where to from here?
Gonna buy a helmet tomorrow.
Thursday, May 4, 2017
Uncle Henry's carpet runner
As I write these words, Lucy the Treeing Tennessee Brindle is busy licking the carpet runner that runs from under my feet to the front of the fireplace. She licks it a lot.
Here's why.
When Uncle Henry went to his reward a few years back me and the Farm Manager were pretty much the last ones on the scene to pick over what he'd left behind in that little apartment just off Bathurst. All we got was the carpet runners. One is in the upstairs hall, and the other one, from Henry's kitchen, is the one Lucy's licking.
Uncle Henry came from one of those shit-hole shtettls in Poland where you had to be plenty quick on your feet to avoid the cattle cars and the camps back in the forties. Henry successfully avoided both.
Henry washed up in Toronto sometime after the WW II, and led a quiet and eminently civilized life just off Bathurst. He was a tailor by trade, and that's how he made his modest but honest living until he retired.
But his passion was cooking!
Uncle Henry was renowned for his beet borscht, his carp dishes that everybody hated, his gefillte fish, and his matzo ball soup. And he made the most impressive lemon meringue pie.
He'd whip up these delights in his kitchen and then wobble down that carpet runner to the dining room...
Which is why, ten years after his passing, Lucy still licks that carpet runner.
Here's why.
When Uncle Henry went to his reward a few years back me and the Farm Manager were pretty much the last ones on the scene to pick over what he'd left behind in that little apartment just off Bathurst. All we got was the carpet runners. One is in the upstairs hall, and the other one, from Henry's kitchen, is the one Lucy's licking.
Uncle Henry came from one of those shit-hole shtettls in Poland where you had to be plenty quick on your feet to avoid the cattle cars and the camps back in the forties. Henry successfully avoided both.
Henry washed up in Toronto sometime after the WW II, and led a quiet and eminently civilized life just off Bathurst. He was a tailor by trade, and that's how he made his modest but honest living until he retired.
But his passion was cooking!
Uncle Henry was renowned for his beet borscht, his carp dishes that everybody hated, his gefillte fish, and his matzo ball soup. And he made the most impressive lemon meringue pie.
He'd whip up these delights in his kitchen and then wobble down that carpet runner to the dining room...
Which is why, ten years after his passing, Lucy still licks that carpet runner.
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
In the shadow of the crooked pine
Winter is a bummer. But without winter, we wouldn't appreciate summer.
I appreciate all four seasons. That's why I live here.
We've got a crooked pine along the driveway. I've been many times tempted to cut her down. She tilts noticeably to the north while all the other pines along the driveway are straight up and down.
Crooked pine vs. straight pine...
But I love that crooked pine!
She's still standing.
Crooked...
I usually head out to the front stoop early in the afternoon, glass in hand, after I've digested the daily news, and if necessary, posted a blog or two.
The daily news today is chock-full of bad news from South Sudan. That's the "newest" country in the world, don't ya know!?
They're having a famine crisis.
The reason South Sudan is the newest country in the world is because a pack of assholes in the US State Department connived long and hard to break South Sudan away from Sudan. Follow the links in this blog post to find out about their tactics and motivation.
Point is, Uncle Sam is the baby-daddy of out-of-wedlock South Sudan. Without the interference of all those smug American "wonks," there would be no South Sudan today. Too bad the citizens of this newest nation are on the brink of starvation.
Will Uncle Sam be held to account!
Of course not!
But you can bet your bottom dollar that US armaments manufacturers are pocketing profits aplenty from both sides of the Sudanese civil war.
That's a big part of the exceptional nation's reason for being in the modern era; stir up hatred and violence and then sell guns and bombs to both sides.
After all, the USA and the Me-Too states don't really export much else. (Except the Germans of course...)
It's how we roll here in the Nations of Virtue.
In the afternoon the sun eventually goes down behind that crooked pine, at least till about the first of May. I am happy to report that with the advent of Spring and the sun getting ever-higher on the horizon, its evening trajectory now clears the top of the crooked pine.
Yup, I'm bathing in sunshine all afternoon long.
Too bad about those starving folks in South Sudan...
I appreciate all four seasons. That's why I live here.
We've got a crooked pine along the driveway. I've been many times tempted to cut her down. She tilts noticeably to the north while all the other pines along the driveway are straight up and down.
Crooked pine vs. straight pine...
But I love that crooked pine!
She's still standing.
Crooked...
I usually head out to the front stoop early in the afternoon, glass in hand, after I've digested the daily news, and if necessary, posted a blog or two.
The daily news today is chock-full of bad news from South Sudan. That's the "newest" country in the world, don't ya know!?
They're having a famine crisis.
The reason South Sudan is the newest country in the world is because a pack of assholes in the US State Department connived long and hard to break South Sudan away from Sudan. Follow the links in this blog post to find out about their tactics and motivation.
Point is, Uncle Sam is the baby-daddy of out-of-wedlock South Sudan. Without the interference of all those smug American "wonks," there would be no South Sudan today. Too bad the citizens of this newest nation are on the brink of starvation.
Will Uncle Sam be held to account!
Of course not!
But you can bet your bottom dollar that US armaments manufacturers are pocketing profits aplenty from both sides of the Sudanese civil war.
That's a big part of the exceptional nation's reason for being in the modern era; stir up hatred and violence and then sell guns and bombs to both sides.
After all, the USA and the Me-Too states don't really export much else. (Except the Germans of course...)
It's how we roll here in the Nations of Virtue.
In the afternoon the sun eventually goes down behind that crooked pine, at least till about the first of May. I am happy to report that with the advent of Spring and the sun getting ever-higher on the horizon, its evening trajectory now clears the top of the crooked pine.
Yup, I'm bathing in sunshine all afternoon long.
Too bad about those starving folks in South Sudan...
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